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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22407865">Bite-Sized</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/adlyb/pseuds/adlyb'>adlyb</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Vampire Diaries (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 13:01:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,638</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22407865</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/adlyb/pseuds/adlyb</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Short little klaulena ficlets based on tumblr prompts. Each chapter is a different ficlet.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elena Gilbert/Klaus Mikaelson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>130</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>265</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. "Have you ever painted me?"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Almost all of these are first sentence prompts-- someone gives me the first sentence, and I fill it in from there. Enjoy.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>"Have you ever painted me?" </em>
</p><p>She can’t help but ask him as she flicks through a cache of Klaus’s work. Some of the paintings are so old that the linen canvas underneath has begun to rot away, the varnish cracked and yellowed like parched earth too long without water. Their age is hardly noticeable, though, against the arresting faces of beautiful women, and occasionally men, that stare back at her across time. Klaus’s lovers, gathered here so he can look back on them from time to time. </p><p>“No.” </p><p>“No?” She clamps down hard on the hurt and the jealousy his curt refusal stirs up. She glances down again at the paintings in their crate. A few of the faces are even familiar. Caroline. That werewolf girl Tyler used to hang out with. She’d thought this<em> thing </em>between them <em>meant</em> something.   </p><p>Klaus comes up behind her, drawing her away from his past. Into the circle of his arms. He tips her face up, and considers her seriously. </p><p>“Your face holds too much power over me to ever commit it to posterity. It already haunts me. I fear what would happen were I ever to set it down to canvas as well.” </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading! I'm taking prompts over on my tumblr @ livlepretre through the end of the weekend.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. “How did you get into my bedroom?”</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"How did you get into my bedroom?" </em>
</p><p>She freezes when she spots him, her eyes immediately darting to the drawer where she keeps her weapons. Too far away.</p><p>Klaus shrugs from his seat by her window, bored. “Through the hall doorway, as it happens.”</p><p>“No, I mean– who invited you in?”</p><p>He smirks, then, and apprehension curdles in her stomach.</p><p>“Oh, you don’t recall? You did.”</p><p>Her apprehension boils over into dread. “No, no, I definitely didn’t. And besides, why would I?”</p><p>“Oh, you wouldn’t remember. I made sure of that, after I switched out the vervain you douse your coffee with.” Klaus stands, then, and crowds her up against the wall before she knows what’s happening. He twines a strand of her hair around his finger, rubbing it overly familiarly between his thumb and forefinger. “As to why,” he murmurs, leaning down to press his mouth against her cheek, her jaw, her throat, “I should think that shall become clear soon enough.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading! I'm taking prompts over on my tumblr @ livlepretre through the end of the weekend.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. "As I held our bundle of joy, I asked myself how something so beautiful could come from a relationship founded on destiny and death."</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>As I held our bundle of joy, I asked myself how something so beautiful could come from a relationship founded on destiny and death. </em>
</p><p>She has no right to feel this happy… and maybe happiness isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s more like <em>completion</em>. The sense that despite everything she’s gone through– the death, the loneliness, the hard choices she made with every impossible step– despite those things, or maybe <em>because</em> of those things– her life has come full circle. </p><p>Klaus settles on the bed behind her and hooks his chin over her shoulder, to peer down into the face of the infant asleep in her arms. </p><p> “I’ve always believed it was your death that sealed you to me. That marked you as my own.”</p><p>She knows the story well. When she’d refused him, he’d killed everyone she loved, until there was only him. Even when she’d succumbed to his bed, though, her heart had remained as cold and distant as the night without a star.</p><p>It had been the child growing within her that had changed that. Warped everything like the reflection in a soap bubble, until one morning, waking beside him, she had felt a pang in her chest that she recognized with terrible dismay. That had been the first morning her thoughts had not strayed to her dead, but had lingered in the present instead, transfixed on the improbable father of her child. </p><p>Holding the baby in her arms, it seems impossible that she had ever fought so hard against this. That she had ever had another future planned for herself.</p><p>Oblivious to the turn of her thoughts, Klaus reaches forward and strokes the back of a finger along the baby’s mottled cheek. “How strange for life to be how I ultimately won you.” </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. "I expect you're here to see my brother."</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"I expect you're here to see my brother."</em>
</p><p>"Is he in?"</p><p>Elijah considers lying, considers telling her some harmless tale to turn her around, to keep her from coming in, from finding the girl upstairs that Niklaus has carelessly left to bleed out on the slick marble bathroom floor.</p><p>Not for the first time, he cannot help but think that his brother is infinitely undeserving of Elena Gilbert. If he had known that the two of them would somehow wind up in each other's arms, he never would have left town. Never would have left Elena so vulnerable.</p><p>He could never speak openly against the relationship, though. Anything he says would just be read as petty jealousy, instead of the dire warning against Niklaus's monstrous nature.</p><p>But perhaps he can show her.</p><p>Elijah offers her a smile, small and neat and <em>contained. </em>"He's upstairs." He opens the door wide and beckons her past the threshold. Studiously ignores the too-observant look Elena pins him with as she steps past him.</p><p>At the bottom of the stairs, she pauses. "I know things have been weird between us, ever since you came back."</p><p>"Have they?"</p><p>"You<em> left</em>, Elijah. You left me here when I needed you most."</p><p>"I'm here now."</p><p>She shakes her head. "That's not good enough."</p><p>He lets her go, his thoughts racing ahead to the moment when his brother inevitably reminds her that he is so very wrong for her. That something as twisted and cold and blood-thirsty as him could never be the right match for someone so kind and good-hearted as Elena Gilbert. And when that time comes, Elijah will seize his chance to be for her the knight she has always wanted him to be. The chance he had so foolishly thrown away with both hands, over and over again. (But Elijah is immortal. He is accustomed to chances coming back to him, again and again, and all he need do is decide to <em>take them</em>.)</p><p>Mere moments pass between Elena disappearing at the top of the stairs and the sound of heated arguing.</p><p>Elijah holds himself ready.</p><p>At the first sign that Niklaus will lash out, he'll intervene. Shelter Elena.</p><p>The minutes tick by. The argument grows hushed. Changes into something else altogether.</p><p>Later, Elena creeps down the stairs, her face flushed, her clothes wrinkled.</p><p>She pauses when she sees him.</p><p>"You knew about the body." She says it as a fact, not a question.</p><p>He doesn't answer her. Cannot answer the disappointment in her eyes.</p><p>"I don't know what you thought you were setting me up for, but whatever it was, it didn't work."</p><p>She leaves then, back up the stairs to rejoin his brother.</p><p>Elijah shuts his eyes. Considers for the first time that perhaps the chance to play white knight really will not come by again.</p><p>At some point, quite without his noticing, Elena Gilbert has learned to take care of herself.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading, and for commenting!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. "It's your turn, Nik."</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"It's your turn, Nik." </em>
</p><p>She doesn’t even turn to face him, let alone lift her head from the pillow, to give him this directive. </p><p>Amazing. A thousand years of every conceivable creature, mortal and immortal alike, cowering before him, only for this girl to come along, to know what he is, who he is, and to tell him to rot in hell anyway. It had been her bravura, more than anything else, which had attracted him to her. That had and still does give him so much pleasure in her company. She’s the only one who’s ever measured up. </p><p>Across the room, the baby’s snuffling rapidly ratchets up into a full, lungy howl, and Elena swats at him blindly to push him from the bed, and over to where their infant daughter fusses in her bassinet. </p><p>Gingerly, Klaus lifts the infant and gathers her into his arms, dredging up ancient, nearly forgotten memories of a younger brother whom he had often soothed just the same as he hums to her a melody that has all but faded into the deep. </p><p>The girl settles sleepily in his arms, arms curling about his neck, cheek pressed hot against his throat. So much easier to handle than her mother. So much more willing to accept him, his affection, his love. </p><p>By now, Elena has sat up in bed, and, eyes still half-shut, accepts the baby from him to nurse. </p><p>He likes to watch them like this. His girls, the two of them, safe and close and quiet. However unlikely the circumstances that led them here, they are his now. He would burn the world down, so that they can remain like this, with him. The thought is always there, in the back of his mind. </p><p>But for now, as Elena glances up at him and catches his eye, offers him one of her rare, fleeting smiles before beckoning him closer to her, so she can press herself into his side while she cares for their daughter, he can let those thoughts rest, until another day. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. "What's with the tiara on my doorstep?"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"What's with the tiara on my doorstep?"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"It's a king's duty to crown his queen, after all."</em>
</p><p>She'd stormed over here as soon as she'd opened the door to find the delicately wrought diamond piece inside a crisply wrapped parcel, looking so innocent she knew it had to be anything but. "You've got to be kidding me," she says, trying to thrust the tiara into Klaus's hands.</p><p>"Oh, not at all," he replies, taking the tiara from her and settling it atop her head.</p><p>It's heavier than it looks. She can feel the weight of it, pressing down on her, the way that Klaus's intentions have pressed in on her since he blew back into town last August.</p><p>"Don't you look the picture," he murmurs. "You'll wear this tonight, will you not?" There's something so soft and yearning in his expression as he takes her in. She should feel ridiculous, dressed in a henley and diamonds, but instead, caught in Klaus's open regard, she feels beautiful, adored. It's a heady, dangerous feeling. A sort of spell he's cast on her before, that she falls under time and time again.</p><p>"To the ball?" she asks faintly.</p><p>"I want to show you off."</p><p>"Don't. We've been over this. I'm not your girlfriend."</p><p>"That's not what I want you for, and you know it."</p><p>She does, is the thing. He'd alluded to it only moments before, in his typical overly lofty declarations. Kings and queens, gods and monsters and maidens fair.</p><p>"I'm just a girl," Elena tells him softly, taking the tiara off and gently placing it down on a side table. "Nothing special."</p><p>He snatches up her wrist and presses a hot kiss against the pulse. "You've never told a more outlandish lie. You've never been<em> just</em> a girl. Your fate has always been to be something more. To be the one to stand by my side."</p><p>He's so <em>persuasive</em> when he talks like this. So certain. It would be so easy to agree. To be his, and never look back.</p><p>Except, she is her own. The narrative has always been written to make her a pawn, but she's never accepted it as such.</p><p>Elena draws away from him, and he lets her.</p><p>"If I <em>am</em> going to wear a crown, it's going to be the one I put upon my own head. I won't be anything less than your equal," she warns him.</p><p>Surprise– and pleasure– blazes in Klaus's eyes. "I'll look for you tonight, then… my queen."</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading. Reviews are life, y'all.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. This time he won't fight his brother for the hand of a Petrova, loving her from afar will be enough for him.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>This time he won't fight his brother for the hand of a Petrova, loving her from afar will be enough for him.</em>
</p><p>Even as he makes this vow to himself, he can hardly believe it– especially because, he realizes with a jolt, he's completely in earnest. He really will leave her to her happiness.</p><p>How was it that he'd lived through all those centuries more or less unchanged, and yet in the course of a single human lifespan, he'd grown old?</p><p>He knows the answer. Can hardly think on the daughter who'd been born and grown and eventually died without feeling the loss of her afresh, the first <em>real </em>loss he'd experienced in his immortal existence.</p><p>When Elena had arisen from her enchanted slumber some eighty years after he'd last seen her– human, confused, frightened to discover a world where there were no more Salvatores waiting for her with open arms– but oh, so very lovely and brave, still– and sought him out, he had felt the first true interest in anything at all since his daughter's death.</p><p>He had been living in Canada then, in a stretch of tundric wilderness remote enough to make even Thoreau happy. Her finding him at all had been a feat of stubborn impetuosity. Despite his better senses urging him to turn her away, he let her slip inside, a beautiful ghost from his past, and tell him her story. Found himself telling her his without meaning to.</p><p>They were both very sad, and somehow, being sad together felt like the thing to do.</p><p>She didn't leave that night, or the next, or the next. It never occurred to him to ask her when she would.</p><p>The course of events that led to her moving in with him, to spending all of their endless, spare hours together, had been as natural and gradual, as devastating in its aftermath, as the shifting of tectonic plates. He had fallen in love with her without noticing until it was too late.</p><p>But he had time. All of the time in the world, literally, unfortunately. He would wait for Elena's heart to be ready.</p><p>And then came the day that Elijah found them, taking a place as the third in their little home without hesitation or preamble. He had not even bothered to feign astonishment at finding Elena alive and hale– only satisfaction. Elena had smiled for his brother, that first night, in a way she had never smiled for him, and Klaus realized that she had been ready for some time now– just not for him.</p><p>Elena seems happy, now, with his brother. Their love affair had sprung up seemingly overnight, but Klaus understands that it's a thing that had been planted long ago, when he had cared nothing for Elena beyond the certainty that her blood in his mouth would free him.</p><p>He'd been wrong about that. He is no freer now than he was then.</p><p>Therein lies the issue. To his mind, he is as linked to Elena now as he was for all the long years preceding her birth and her first death. His heart would not be so pierced by the mere thought of her if it were not so.</p><p>The time was, he would have fought Elijah for her.</p><p>Now, though, he is content to love her from afar. To let her to her happiness.</p><p>He's packed his bag. He'll be gone on the morrow.</p><p>And maybe, he hopes, he dreams, he holds his breath– she'll come looking for him again. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading, y'all!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Rebekah watched as Elena, the newest doppelganger, held court with her brother playing the doting courtier by her side.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Rebekah watched as Elena, the newest doppelganger, held court with her brother playing the doting courtier by her side. Now this was a girl that she would be proud to call sister.</em>
</p><p>Which, one might imagine, came as a terrible shock for her. She hadn't particularly enjoyed watching Tatia tear her two favorite brothers to bits for sport, and she had avoided any introduction to the ill-starred (and, she had hoped, soon to be dead and forgotten) Katerina Petrova altogether. (She had gotten part of her wish in fact if not in spirit, which had taught her an awful lot about wishing in the first place.)</p><p>Avoiding this Elena Gilbert simply hadn't been possible. Nik had met her during her junior year abroad in Italy, proceeded to immediately woo her, and, despite his many, many lectures on the dangers of the heart, and the apparently completely cold, calculating way he had handled Katerina, had fallen inexplicably and irreversibly in love with the girl.</p><p>Rebekah had been prepared to hate her for it.</p><p>Now, as she watched the way Elena so effortlessly smoothed things over between her brother and Marcel with nothing more than a well-placed touch to her brother's arm and an open, almost mischievous smile for Marcel, Rebekah could admit that perhaps she had been over hasty in forming her opinions.</p><p>This Elena Gilbert was a strange creature to behold. Two, maybe three years older than either of her predecessors had been when they met their untimely ends. Her face was at once shockingly familiar and jarringly <em>wrong.</em> She didn't know how Nik could look at her without his eyes watering from the strain of holding those two different versions of that face in mind at once, but perhaps that had been the key to his falling in love with her at all. Maybe if he had met her when she was still a teenager, still an<em> exact</em> mirror of Tatia or Katerina, he would have snapped her up and killed her on the spot. Instead, curiosity had given him time to get to know her.</p><p>Another odd detail stuck out: how easily Elena seemed to take the supernatural world in stride. She would have to question Nik, or maybe better yet Elijah, about that later.</p><p>Elena noticed her watching them from the shadows of the Abattoir entrance, then. Standing, the girl approached her and held her arms wide in welcome.</p><p>"You must be Rebekah!" she exclaimed with unfeigned warmth. "Klaus has told me so many wonderful things about you– he adores you, you know."</p><p>Blushing, Rebekah found herself hugging this girl as though she'd known her her whole life. Found herself reeled in by that seductive Petrova charm that this girl positively <em>oozed. </em>Realized she didn't mind, so long as she kept smiling so sweetly at her.</p><p>When they joined the gathering, Nik was perhaps over-eager to draw Elena's attention back to himself, and Elena seemed all too happy to bestow her radiant regard upon him.</p><p>Rebekah had never appreciated how handsome Nik could look with his face transformed by love.</p><p>Had she not been so intent in her study of the couple, had she not been so suspicious of the girl from the get-go, she would not have noticed the way the girl's eyes gleamed and hardened, ever so minutely, as she gazed down upon Nik's open, yearning face. It was such a small thing– just a flash, and it was over, Elena's face smooth and blissful once again. But it bothered Rebekah, like a splinter under her nail.</p><p>Later, as Rebekah prowled through night clubs hunting for an interesting meal, she mulled that expression over, trying to put her finger on the emotion she had detected in that girl's eyes.</p><p>It was later, as she wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her wrist and straightened her skirt, that it came to her: <em>triumph. </em>And Rebekah understood, with perfect clarity, what type of woman it must have taken to conquer her brother's heart.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This is it for this little prompt series. If you enjoyed these, please check out my other fics- I have about 10 finished Klaus/Elena fics, and two wips, including the epic-length labor of love, Fairytale Ending. I hope you'll check them out!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. All of his mistakes lead up to this moment of truth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>All of his mistakes lead up to this moment of truth.</em>
</p><p>“I’m in love with you.” </p><p>It’s as much of a revelation to him in the moment that he says it as it is to her. </p><p>Elena shakes her head, backing away from him. Her eyes are very wide, shining in the fading light of the setting sun, as her face leeches of color. “That’s not possible.” </p><p>He laughs ruefully, vexed with himself as much as at the universe at large, for allowing this to happen. It would have been useful to have reached this insight <em>before </em>he’d tortured and traumatized her friends– certainly before he’d had her brother killed, even if he had come back to life. That could put a damper on things. But alas. They were where they were. </p><p>“I assure you, only the most ardent and obstinate of feelings would ever move me to confess to you so.” </p><p>“You’re insane. You might think you feel something for me, but it’s all in your head.” </p><p>In a blink, he’s circled around her. He captures her easily, just as he had the spring before, when fate had sealed her to him. He had been so blind. </p><p>Her heart flies as he slides his hands from her wrists down her sides, over her hips. “You feel it too,” Klaus murmurs into her hair. “The blood doesn’t lie.” </p><p>“What I feel is revulsion. Disgust. Hatred.” </p><p>“You have passionate feelings toward me.” His hand slips lower, down her thigh, to the hem of her darling knit dress. His hand smoothes back up, pulling the hem of the dress with it. “All of those feelings balance on a knife’s edge. How easily I could turn those feelings to desire. Adoration.” He pauses, his hand skimming over her inner thigh. Nips at the scar he left her the year before. <em>“Love.”</em> </p><p>“You sound like Katherine,” his darling girl spits. </p><p>Klaus laughs against her neck. “I taught her everything she knows.” </p><p>“You mean you’re the one who twisted her into a psychotic monster.” </p><p>“I taught her to break free of her inhibitions. I could teach you too.” </p><p>Elena struggles against him, and he allows her to break free of his hold. “I’d rather die,” she hisses. And yet, none of that can hide the flush on her face. The dampness he had felt gathering between her legs just before she twisted away from his touch. </p><p>“That, too, can be arranged,” he tells her. He ducks down and captures her mouth in a kiss before she can protest. He smiles against her mouth when she leans into him, for just a moment. “But have a care, Elena. I’m playing for keeps, and this is a game I don’t intend to lose.” </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Ask-box is reopened for prompt ficlets now through the end of the week.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. "You didn't expect me to miss my doppelganger's graduation, did you?"</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"You didn’t expect me to miss my doppelganger’s graduation, did you?"</em>
</p><p>“You’re <em>kidding </em>me. <em>You can’t be here!</em>” she hisses at him, dragging him behind the bleachers where (hopefully) no one will see them. </p><p>“Afraid to be seen with me?”</p><p>
  <em>“Obviously!” </em>
</p><p>Klaus laughs at her, and snatches up her hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it before holding her hand up like a lady being led into a ballroom and twirling a finger on the other hand around. “Let’s have a look at you now in all of your finery.” </p><p>“This isn’t funny. If anyone sees us together–” </p><p>“They’ll what? Scowl at me? Last I checked, there’s absolutely nothing either of your fine Salvatores can do against me. Certainly nothing that could keep me away from you.” </p><p>She scowls to hide her blush. “Aren’t you supposed to be in New Orleans right about now?” </p><p>“You thought I’d miss today?” </p><p>“Yeah?<em> It’s a high school graduation.</em>”</p><p>“I’ve already told you I intend to win you, when all is said and done.” </p><p>“You don’t mean that though.” </p><p>Klaus smiles, taking her hands again and drawing her deeper under the bleachers, where no one can see him draw her close so he can whisper in her ear, “I thought perhaps if I keep showing up, you’d eventually believe me.” </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Blind date</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Elena freezes in the doorway to the coffee shop. Checks her phone again, for the text from her blind date– who says he’ll be wearing a a red shirt with a black leather jacket. She glances frantically between her phone and the man sitting alone in the back of the coffee shop who can be none other than her date. </p><p>Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. This has to be a mistake. </p><p>She’s backing out the door when Klaus glances up and clocks her right away. A slow disbelieving smile curls up the corners of his mouth. </p><p>He could use his supernatural speed to catch up to her in an instant, but instead seems to take deliberate relish in tormenting her by slowly, <em>languorously</em> sauntering to meet her at the door. </p><p>“My, my, Miss Gilbert. I must say I wasn’t expecting to meet <em>you </em>here today.” The way he says it makes it sound like <em>she</em> set this up. As if she would <em>ever </em>seek him out! </p><p>“You were supposed to be some guy named Nick!” she blurts out. “Ava told me she knew you through her mother’s gallery.” </p><p>Klaus’s mouth twists, something like bemusement flitting across his features. “I <em>do</em> know Ava through her mother’s gallery. I show there, you know. And for the record, you were just supposed to be a nice girl named Elle, from her MFA program.” </p><p>She ducks her head. “Well. I guess there’s something to be said for reinventing oneself.” </p><p>There’s a long awkward pause as they take each other in. They haven’t seen each other in years– not since she was in high school. There’s an ocean of past grievances between them, but at this point, literally lifetimes removed from those old ills, their past feels like more of a connection in a world where she finds it so very, very hard to really latch on to anyone than it feels like a reason to stay away. </p><p>Klaus must feel it too. </p><p>“Well, since we find ourselves here in this twist of fate, will you stay and have a coffee with me?” </p><p>She says yes.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. "You have beautiful eyes."</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“You have beautiful eyes,” Elena blurts out before mentally slapping herself.</em>
</p><p>“I believe the next line is <em>what big teeth you have,</em>” Klaus rejoins smoothly before he returns his attention to threatening Damon– as though she hasn’t just outed herself with the most embarrassing and inappropriate crush in the world.</p><p>And the thing is, this isn’t the first time she’s said something absolutely mortifying to him. Last week, while negotiating for Rebekah’s daggered corpse, she’d told him he <em>smelled nice</em>. He’d responded with something she didn’t really process– something about wearing the blood of his enemies as a cologne? weird– because she’d been too caught up in the low rumble of his voice and the way his mouth moved when he spoke to her. </p><p>Three days ago, he’d actually caught her staring at him from across the bar, soaking him up with her hungry eyes. <em>Thank God</em> he’d assumed she was spying on him for more underhanded purposes when he’d confronted her about it. She’ll <em>never</em> live it down if he finds out how she feels about him. </p><p>The worst part is, she doesn’t even know when or how this crazy crush started. </p><p>She remembers what it had felt like to revile him– he’d given her nothing but the heebie jeebies when he’d bitten her last spring, even though that memory now plays front and center in all her dirty fantasies about him. </p><p>And she’d <em>definitely</em> still been afraid of him when he’d returned on Senior Prank Night. She thinks. </p><p>Except, if she’s being honest, she’d been <em>excited</em> to see him, even then. The terror of actually coming face to face with him again had only ratcheted up the electricity of her desire for him, already burning bright within her last August.</p><p>It’s only gotten worse since then. Every time she sees him, she risks exposing herself. </p><p>Hell, she risks exposing herself just randomly throughout the day, when the temptation to bring him up to her friends, or to doodle his name in the margins of her history notes, rises so strongly within her she has to constantly check herself lest she wreck herself. If any of her friends ever find out about this, they’ll lock her up <em>for sure. </em></p><p>She doesn’t even want to <em>think</em> about what Klaus would do. Laugh at her, probably. Mock her, most definitely. Ugh. He’d probably use it against her– <em>kinky</em>– and it’s not fair that <em>that </em>thought makes her whole body light up. About a thousand separate images of ways he could punish her in bed flash through her thoughts right then and there. </p><p>This, finally catches Klaus’s interest. “Why has your face turned that alarming shade of scarlet?” He pushes Damon out of the way like he’s a child. “Are you having an allergic reaction, sweetheart?” </p><p>Oh, it’s not<em> fair</em> the way hearing him call her <em>sweetheart</em> just makes her <em>melt</em>. </p><p>“Umm, no,” she mumbles. </p><p>Klaus grabs hold of her arm, still batting Damon off with the other, and drags her against him so he can examine her more closely. He tilts her head back with a palm against her jaw and uses his thumb to coax her mouth open so he can peer inside. </p><p>The temptation to nip at his thumb, to draw his fingers into her mouth, is nearly stronger than she can withstand. </p><p>His face is so close to hers. She could lean forward, and finally find out what that red mouth really tastes like. </p><p>“No swelling,” he announces. His eyes sweep over her. “And no skin rashes. Not an allergy then. So why–” </p><p>He leans forward and takes a long deep exhalation from the base of her throat. </p><p>Elena knows the exact moment he susses her out– Klaus goes stock still, the way a leopard stalking its prey freezes in place when the antelope glances up. </p><p>Oh God Oh God Oh God</p><p>She’s in <em>soooooo much trouble</em>.</p><p>A moment later he’s moving again, pulling away from her and smiling this small, hot smile that absolutely <em>enthralls</em> her. </p><p>“Our little secret,” he assures her, patting her hand. He nods toward Damon. Winks at her. “Until next time.” </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. "Stop courting my doppelganger behind my back."</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"Stop courting my doppelgänger behind my back."</em>
</p><p>“Does it really count as going behind your back if I asked her out right in front of you?” Kol asks as he throws himself onto a leather sofa. </p><p>Klaus massages his temples. When he’d built this home for his family and more or less accepted their universal undaggering, he had never anticipated the frustrations that living in such close quarters with his siblings would entail. </p><p>He had also failed to anticipate the attention his doppelganger would garner from the lot of them, or the…. <em>discomfort</em> that those attentions would produce within him. </p><p>“Did she say yes?” he asks his brother tightly. </p><p>Kol snorts. “She slapped me good and proper.” </p><p>Just as Klaus is allowing himself to feel an iota of relief, Kol continues, “I think slapping may be a bit of foreplay for that one though. She strikes me as the kind of girl who likes to play dirty before– well, before playing <em>dirty.</em>” </p><p>She’d never slapped <em>him</em> before, he finds himself thinking before he catches himself. </p><p>“I ever find out you’ve laid a finger on my doppelganger, and I’ll remove it. Do you understand me, Kol?” </p><p>Kol grins up at him. “You’re clear as a mountain stream.” </p><p>*</p><p>And it’s not<em> just</em> Kol that Klaus must deal with. </p><p>Rebekah, understandably, wants Elena dead for literally stabbing her in the back, except it’s not really convenient for his sister to spend so much time plotting his prized possession’s untimely demise. </p><p>“You’re just as bad as Elijah,” Rebekah pouts. </p><p>Klaus ruffles. He hadn’t even considered what affect Elijah’s presence could have upon the girl. Best to find out now what exactly their history together entailed.</p><p>“First,” Rebekah continues, “he drags me off of her by the scruff of my neck like I’m no more than a kitten, and then <em>you</em> throw the actual hissy fit just because I may have left a few fingerprints on the girl.” </p><p>“This isn’t a hissy fit,” Klaus mutters from amidst a rain of broken crystal decanters. </p><p>So he <em>may</em> have thrown a fit of <em>some</em> sort, but it definitely hadn’t been <em>hissy</em>. He’s a wolf. If anything, it was a growly fit. </p><p> Rebekah doesn’t seem to hear him. “You know, I think had I been mortal that your precious Elena would have left some marks on <em>me</em>.” A sly smile creeps over her full lips. “She has a lot more fight in her than I anticipated. I rather like that in a woman.” </p><p>Klaus frowns at her. “Rebekah, I have been very forgiving of your ill-conceived little games thus far–” </p><p>“How do you think she would respond to a bit of bondage? I have class with her in another hour. It would be simple enough to kidnap her after.” </p><p>Rebekah does, of course, despite Klaus’s admonitions that she is to do no such thing because <em>if anyone is going to kidnap the doppelganger, it’s going to be him. </em></p><p>He runs into her in one of the upstairs hallways, her wrists bruised from the velvet ropes Rebekah had used to bind Elena to her bed, a slim dagger clenched in her fist. </p><p>“Oh, it’s you,” Elena breathes in audible relief. </p><p>He raises an eyebrow at her. “I see you’re in no need of a rescue. How’d you slip free?” </p><p>“Rebekah likes to flirt. I used that to lure her close enough to the bed for me to… work some magic.” </p><p>Klaus’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. His stomach flips at her words, but he’s not sure why. “Must I assume she’ll be very angry with you when she gets free?” he asks her lightly. </p><p>Elena purses her lips. “I wouldn’t say <em>that.</em>” </p><p>He watches her go, his stomach sinking with every step away from him she takes. </p><p>*</p><p>“She’s a gentle soul with a pure heart and a noble spirit. She doesn’t deserve to be pulled into your web of sin and infamy time and time again.” </p><p>Klaus stares at Finn, who glares at him with such righteous certainty that he thinks he should record his expression for Elijah to study later in private. </p><p>He realizes his mouth is hanging open. He shuts it, but that doesn’t make any of his acute disbelief go away. “Since when do you have such strong opinions on the subject of my doppelganger?” he finally gathers himself to ask. </p><p>“Since I sat down with her this afternoon at the local tavern and had a long discussion with her. She’s an impressive young woman. Thoughtful, kind. Exceedingly beautiful, in mind and spirit as well as in countenance.” </p><p>“You have a crush on her.” </p><p>Finn blushes. His stoic older brother actually <em>blushes.</em> “It’s true I admire her, yes, but I am no Icarus– I dare not fly so close to her sun. Only– to grant her my protection where I might, and to insist that you remove her from your future plots and allow her to live in the peace and security she deserves.” </p><p>The idea of removing himself from Elena Gilbert’s life is completely unacceptable. He won’t hear of it. </p><p>“Did she ask you to say this to me?” </p><p>“Miss Gilbert would never be so untoward. I volunteered.” </p><p>“After a lengthy discussion with her.” </p><p>“I just said as much.” </p><p>It’s obvious Elena Gilbert has manipulated his eldest brother. </p><p>The thought should grant him more relief than it actually does. After all, it’s not as though <em>Finn </em>has discovered some aspect of Elena Gilbert’s nature that had heretofore been obscured to him. She had only revealed those aspects of herself which would most appeal to his brother’s sickeningly chivalrous disposition. </p><p>And yet, the thought that Elena would open up to any of his siblings in ways she refuses to open herself up for him lingers like a thorn in his mind. </p><p>*</p><p>Elijah is the final straw. </p><p>He spies the two of them walking together through the town green, their heads bent close together as they talk. Elena links her arm through Elijah’s and leans intimately into his body as they walk. It really is becoming more and more imperative that he discover the exact nature of their shared history together– </p><p>Just then, the wind blows, streaming Elena’s hair around her face in a cloud. With infinite gentleness, Elijah tucks her hair back behind her ear. The two of them lock eyes for a very long time, until a smile spreads so deeply over her face that it lights up her very eyes into dark pools as deep and glittering as the night sky. </p><p>His heart lurches in his chest. </p><p>It is one thing to know that Kol has been attempted to date his doppelganger ever since he first laid eyes on her at the disastrous family ball. That Rebekah gets to spend each day with her at school and has even, apparently, bedded her a time or two. That Finn has forged a true emotional connection with her. </p><p>But <em>this</em>. <em>This</em> looks an awful lot like love stamped across Elena Gilbert’s face as she gazes up at Elijah. </p><p>He finally understands the feeling that’s been twisting and boiling within him as his siblings have gotten deeper and deeper under Elena Gilbert’s skin. </p><p>Jealousy, it seems, is something even he is not immune to. </p><p>*</p><p>He’s rip-roaring drunk, leaning heavily against the sweating grain of the Mystic Grill &amp; Bar’s eponymous bar, when he sees her enter out of the corner of his eye. Well, he sees two of her enter, but unless Katerina is back in town, that’s hardly important. </p><p>Wait. Actually, he should probably sober up, just in case the doppelgangers really are about to double-team him. </p><p>Ah, and <em>that’s</em> a lovely thought– </p><p>He’s just ordered himself a pot of coffee when he the two girls resolve into one, who sits down next to him with a huff. </p><p>“Have you seen Elijah?” Elena Gilbert asks him. </p><p>Klaus cocks his head at her. “Not for a few hours, no.” Not since he’d seen the two of them canoodling on the green. </p><p>She glances at her watch. “Weird. He was supposed to meet me here fifteen minutes ago. I’m the one who’s running late.” </p><p>“No, what’s weird is Elijah deigning to meet you <em>here.</em> You must really have laid a spell on him.” </p><p>Elena smiles. Orders herself a rum and coke from the extraordinarily lax barkeep who doesn’t even bother to card her. “Careful, you sound jealous.” She accepts her drink with a twinkling smile and sips delicately through the cocktail straw. </p><p>“Of course I am.” </p><p>Elena freezes, staring at him. Collects herself. “Ha ha, very funny.” </p><p>“No, truly. I didn’t want to admit it for the longest time, but there it is.” </p><p>“You’ve basically turned making my life into a living hell your daily pastime ever since we met.” </p><p>“Apparently I’ve never matured past pulling the pigtails of the girl I adore.” </p><p>Elena practically collapses onto the barstool next to his. She works on her drink with a fervent intensity that puts him in mind of other things she might be able to do with her cherry mouth. </p><p>“What about your siblings?” she asks at last. </p><p>“What about them?” </p><p>“They’ve <em>all</em> been acting weird.” </p><p>“I don’t know what you mean.” </p><p>“It’s not normal for all five of you to pursue me at once.” She sets her drink down. “They haven’t… they haven’t been… <em>courting</em> me for you, have they?” </p><p>“Why would they do that?” </p><p>“Because after spending so much time with them and hearing so much about you from their perspectives for the past few weeks, this whole<em> you like me!</em> thing doesn’t seem as terrifying or apocalyptic as my common sense tells me it should. The way they talk about you, you actually seem kind of… sweet.” </p><p>Klaus smiles at her. He doubts that had been any of their intentions, but far be it from him to correct her when she’s just stumbled on such a delicious thought. </p><p>“I could be very sweet to you.” </p><p>Elena bites her lip. Notices the way his eyes track the movement. </p><p>“Fine. Consider this my official lapse in judgment. Show me.” </p><p>*</p><p>Within the week, it’s<em> him</em> courting Elena Gilbert. </p><p>Naturally he calls a family meeting to gloat.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. "There's an old voice in my head that's holding me back."</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>"There's an old voice in my head that's holding me back." </em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Well, tell her that I miss our little talks." </em>
</p><p>“You’re not taking me seriously,” Elena insists. </p><p>Her husband glances up at her from behind his easel. “No?” His brush drips a cad red wash onto their hardwood floor– how many times does she have to remind him to use a drop cloth?– as he studies her. For a moment, as she stares at the steady drip drip drip of the red paint, her mind replaces the image of the red liquid with a red liquid of another sort– with blood, dark and vital, pattering onto a different hardwood floor, in a room that feels as familiar and real in her mind’s eye as their parlor here in New Orleans is right now. “Tell me, then,” her husband says, drawing her out of her dark flight of fancy. He sets his brush down and joins her on the low sofa by the fireplace. </p><p>Elena swallows thickly, pushing the shape of her bloody thoughts away as much as possible while still holding onto the <em>import</em> of them. </p><p>She glances down at her husband’s hands, smeared in red paint. She blanches when she looks up into his face– expects, for a moment, for his eyes to shine with unholy black fire, for his mouth to be ringed in blood and gore, for his fangs– no. No. It’s just the crackling firelight playing tricks on her. </p><p>Her husband so enjoys to paint by firelight. That’s the only reason that, when she thinks of him, her first flash of his face in her mind’s eye is always illuminated by firelight. </p><p>“You can trust me with anything,” he promises her. </p><p>“You’ll think I’m crazy.” </p><p>“I would never.” </p><p>“You’ll realize it was a mistake to marry me.” </p><p>“Marrying you was the single good decision I have ever made in a long life of far too many terrible choices.” </p><p>His conviction fills Elena with the bravery she has been hunting for. Still. She cannot meet his eyes when she confesses to him, “Sometimes, when I look at you, I don’t recognize you.” </p><p>She can hear a frown in his voice as he tells her, “Go on.” </p><p>“I mean, I know it’s you, but you’re… you’re a monster. I look at you and I get this flash, like you want to hunt me– to hurt me, to–” She cuts herself off. The thought of him tearing her throat out is too horrific to speak aloud. </p><p>Her husband cups her face between his hands, heedless of the red paint he smears along her jaw, and turns her gaze to his own. “You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he murmurs to her. “I made sure you would never have to be afraid of me again.” </p><p>Elena frowns. “<em>Made sure? </em>What does that mean?” </p><p>There’s something frightening and oh so familiar in her husband’s eyes. Something inhuman. </p><p>A name tickles at the edges of her thoughts.<em> Klaus–</em> </p><p>But when he smiles at her, she cannot help but lean in to his touch. </p><p>“You have a stubborn mind, my love,” he murmurs. “That’s all.” Her husband leans forward and kisses her full on the lips. And when he pulls away, he coaxes her, in an oddly compelling tone of voice, “Forget these troubling memories, now. You are safe here with me, and I will never let any harm befall you again.” </p><p>*</p><p>Four months later the same voice in her head whispers to her again. Warning her. </p><p>*</p><p>Again, eight months after that. </p><p>*</p><p>Three more years pass, in which she and her husband have a daughter together and move into a bigger house near the park, in which they have a few knockout rows and a few even more explosive make-ups, in which her career as a freelance writer begins to gel and she realizes with a bolt as she curls up with a cup of coffee on their back porch to watch her husband chase their giggling daughter through the backyard that she is really truly happy. And it’s the very awareness of that happiness that stirs her– that strikes her as <em>not right. </em></p><p>Elena frowns, rubbing at the old scar on her neck, which aches sometimes with a phantom pain she cannot explain, especially since she’s never been able to say for certain how she even got that scar– </p><p>Her eyes land on her husband, his arms full as he snatches their daughter up and tosses her high overhead. </p><p>The pieces snap together in her mind in an instant. </p><p>She drops her coffee mug, shattering it upon the ground. </p><p><em>Her husband</em> turns to face her, settling their daughter on his shoulders. “Everything alright?” he calls. </p><p>“Fine! Clumsy me, I just fumbled the mug.” She smiles her sunniest smile at him. </p><p>Klaus won’t be compelling her again. </p><p>And when she’s ready, they’re going to have a little talk. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0015"><h2>15. He finds her when she's 25, not 16.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He finds her when she's twenty-five, not sixteen. </em>
</p><p>That’s the entire problem. A sixteen year old he could have seduced and sacrificed with all of the cold calculating contempt he had felt for Katerina all of those centuries ago. A sixteen year old would have been just another echo wearing Tatia Petrova’s face. A ghost in the machine, haunting him, demanding that he exorcise it lest that error in reality keep rippling through time. </p><p>A twenty-five year old though. A twenty-five year old is an entirely different beast. </p><p>A twenty-five year old can’t so easily be swept aside as a mere duplicate. No, when he meets Elena Gilbert, at a lecture at the Whitney one close May evening when the air itself feels heavy with repressed need, her face is entirely new to him. So familiar it steals his breath the moment he first glimpses her across the auditorium, primly jotting down notes in a little black journal she keeps nestled in her lap, yet <em>new</em> all the same. He’d been looking forward to this lecture, had been mulling over a few questions he would like to ask the artist at the end, but all of that flies out of his head the moment he recognizes her. He doesn’t hear a word the lecturer says after that. Every nerve in his body attunes itself to her instead. To this girl who had somehow transformed a stolen face into something unique and her own. </p><p>After, he follows her away from the reception, to one of the open gallery spaces where she stands off on her own, gazing up at a series of cyanographs. She’s so artlessly lovely, her plastic cup of untouched red wine clasped against her shoulder as she contemplates the work. </p><p>It’s not terribly hard to engineer a meeting with her. To catch her name, somehow more beautiful and lilting than it has any right to be when pronounced in her faint Tidewater accent.  He says something flip about the lecture-- he doesn’t remember what, too distracted by the unlikely reality of her-- and she laughs, the sound deeper than he expects, not the girlish giggle he remembers at all-- and challenges his assessment. </p><p>For the next few minutes, in addition to her laugh and her accent and her name, she needles him with her sharp tongue and bright eyes, her dry wit and secretive smile and her surprisingly forceful opinions on the topic of performativity. </p><p>(“<em>Everything’s</em> a performance, when you get right down to it.” </p><p>“Hardly.” </p><p>“Well, perhaps if you’re either tragically overconfident in yourself or remarkably incapable of introspection, then no. But everyone else is performing every minute of the day.”</p><p>“Even when they’re alone?”</p><p>“Oh, especially.”  </p><p>“You mean to say everyone is a liar.” </p><p>“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”) </p><p>*</p><p>The hard part is getting any more from her. </p><p>“Come have a drink with me,” he tempts her, as the crowd begins to thin out onto the streets. “I know a place just a couple of blocks over.” </p><p>“I really wish I could, but I have a paper due in--” She glances at her wrist-watch-- “about ten hours.” </p><p>He catches hold of her hand, squeezing the fingers as he stares deep into her eyes. “Have a drink with me,” he compels her. </p><p>She bites her lip as she gazes up at him. He can hear the way her pulse quickens and her blood stirs as she takes him in. Desire ripples through her scent. He has her now. </p><p>Except, maybe not, because she shakes her head. “Really, I can’t. Maybe I’ll see you around?” She hurries away without so much as a second glance back. </p><p>Not a hint that she had been aware of his attempt to compel her, either. Perhaps this Elena Gilbert is a master liar herself. </p><p>He wonders if she drinks vervain, or if she’d had it cleverly stashed somewhere on her person. Wonders what kind of girl she must be to have learned that trick at all. </p><p>* </p><p>It’s not terribly hard to follow her onto the underground, careful to remain out of her sight as he stalks her through several line changes over to Queens, and then down several city blocks to a walk-up apartment on the third floor. </p><p>There’s a nice girl who lives in the building across from hers one floor up, who’s naive enough to lean past the threshold when he knocks on her door, so he can yank her out from the relative safety of her home and do away with her without too much fuss. Her apartment becomes the perfect place from which to watch this Elena Gilbert, whom he learns has a habit of working in front of her bare bedroom window. </p><p>He learns a lot of things about her, those first couple of weeks. He learns that she truly is a student, working on her MFA from Queens College. Performative drawing, he hears her explain again and again as he shadows her all over the city, to coffee shops and galleries and libraries and bars, meeting friends for an espresso or classmates for a pint and a smoke after an opening, calling her mother back home in a quaint little town called Mystic Falls. </p><p>He tells himself he’s following her so that he can discover more about her. Tells himself he’s just keeping tabs on her while his agents seek out Katerina and the moonstone in whatever dark corner of the world she must have hidden it. </p><p>He makes the mistake of letting himself into her studio one night, after she’d spent the better part of the night and early hours of the morning toiling away in there. Immediately, the scent of her body-- sweat mostly, with just the faintest coppery edge of blood-- immerses him. He sucks deep lungfuls of the perfumed air into his lungs, greedy. Then he sees the drawings. Stacks and stacks of them, tacked onto the wall, littering the floor, the desk. Imagines the arc of her body as she had made these, the emotion and the intent behind the gestures. Sitting on the desk is a camera. When he picks it up, it’s still warm. He presses play, and there is Elena Gilbert, gliding across the tiny screen, her body and her breath somehow the brush, the color, and the art all at once. </p><p>Weeks more pass before he realizes the gravity of his error-- before he realizes that in slipping into her studio to see her artwork, he had allowed her to slip into him, until he could no longer bear to imagine a world without her in it. </p><p>That to see her art would be to fall in love with her. </p><p>* </p><p>He has the moonstone in his breast pocket the next time he sees her. There’s a full moon just four nights away. He has a werewolf and a vampire and a witch. He could abscond with Elena now, and make it down to Virginia with her in plenty of time. </p><p>It’s why he’d come to this show, orchestrated by one of Elena’s classmates, where he’d known he would find her, drinking whiskey in the back of the gallery with a couple of disaffected sculptors. </p><p>In a moment, she’ll wander right past him, and he can grab her without too much fuss. </p><p>Except, she glances up, and she recognizes him. Blinds him with her smile and bounds over to him. “You again! What are you doing here?” </p><p>And all at once, he’s at a loss for words, because he realizes he doesn’t really <em>want </em>to kill this fascinating, spirited girl. At least, not yet. </p><p>“Playing a role, it would seem,” he replies. </p><p>She steps back, then, openly appraising him. “And what role is that, then?” </p><p>“How about we catch that drink, and we can find out.” </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0016"><h2>16. "The duplicity in your blood is the worst temptation, but also the very best."</h2></a>
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    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><em>"The duplicity in your blood is the worst temptation, but also the very best."</em> </p><p>He mutters this in her ear as he presses his mouth to her throat, lips and teeth sucking hard at the scar he had left her the year before, hard enough to draw blood through the thin skin. </p><p>Elena doesn’t mind. She can hardly think against the swarm of Klaus’s mouth on her bare skin, his hard lean body pressing her tight against the heavy oak door at the Lockwood Mansion. </p><p>On just the other side of that door, the entire Founder’s Council plus the Historical Society, Wickery Bridge Restoration Committee, and several other venerable charities, committees, and societies full of people Elena has known her entire life are gathered for a hospital fundraiser. So are her friends, probably wondering where she’s disappeared to. </p><p>This isn’t her first illicit tango with Klaus. </p><p>Nor will it be her last. </p><p>“What do you mean?” Elena groans as Klaus pushes her dress up over her hips, fitting one hard thigh between her legs as his fingers quest to where she is already dripping with want for him. It’s sick, really, how quickly her body responds to just the briefest look from him from across a room, the faintest smirk on those sinful lips. </p><p>She’s going to hell and she doesn’t even care so long as Klaus keeps touching her like this. </p><p>Klaus leans forward and kisses her on the mouth, pressing the coppery tang of her blood back onto her tongue as his fingers delve into her throbbing core, spreading her moisture up and over her clit. The heat of his thumb pressing into her <em>just like that </em>makes her jump and buck under his touch, but he holds her study, swallowing her cries. </p><p>“You’re a liar, Elena mine,” he breathes into her mouth. “I can taste it in your blood, can hear it in the beat of your heart– you’ll do anything to keep the ones you love safe. Even submit yourself to me. Even pretend to care for me. ” He leans his forehead against her own, strumming her clit. </p><p>Her whole body clenches with her need for him, her legs wrapping vice-like around his thigh, her hips shifting restlessly as she pulls him closer. Kisses him like she’s starved for him. </p><p>Klaus smiles against her lips. Pulls away and kisses her on the brow. “I find I no longer mind the lie so much, so long as you remain here with me.” </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Drunken Encounter</h2></a>
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  <p> </p>
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  <p>The thing is, he’s not actually certain how this happened. Well, he was certain at the time, but now that it’s been a few hours, he doesn’t understand the series of events that got him from “there are six Katerinas slumped over the bar, best go pester her” to “no, wait, there is actually just one <em>Elena</em> writhing naked in his lap, tearing at his hair and his mouth with such wicked abandon that he may never actually recover from this.” All he knows is that he had not appreciated how sweet her skin was the last time he had had his mouth on her. Had not appreciated the shape of her in his arms, or the round softness of her curves under his roving hands. </p>
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  <p>He nips at her mouth, her jaw, and she moans, soft and breathy. Had she moaned when he bit her last spring? No. No, that’s just the fantasy he’s replayed for himself again and again as he relived that moment all throughout the summer. The sound he had imagined does not compare to what she sounds like now as his hands stroke firmly along the lines of her graceful neck, her shoulders and back, her breasts, ribs, waist, and hips. </p>
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  <p>“You’re never going back to your old life,” he commands her, threatens her, begs her as he thrusts himself inside of her. The idea that she would go back to her precious Salvatores after this twists something sharp and ugly and desperate inside of him. </p>
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  <p>“What life?” she pants, bearing down on him and twisting her hips in a way that makes him see stars. “You’ve already taken everything from me.” </p>
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  <p>“Then I’ll replace it. I’ll replace it all,” he swears. </p>
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  <p>He’s not sure if it’s a promise he intends to keep. All he knows is that right now, he intends to keep <em>her.</em> </p>
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  <p>Her only response is to ride him harder. </p>
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  <p>*</p>
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  <p>In the morning, he wakes up with a raging headache and an empty bed. </p>
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  <p>No matter. </p>
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  <p>He has never minded chasing a Petrova woman before. </p>
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<a name="section0018"><h2>18. If I was a blackthorn tree, I'd wanna be felled by you</h2></a>
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          <em>If I was born as a blackthorn tree / I'd wanna be felled by you / Held by you / Fuel the pyre of your enemies</em>
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  <p>“I never meant to take it this far.” </p>
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  <p>“It’s too late for that. You can’t take it back, not any of it.” Elena dares to step into his space. Presses her hand against the fire of his cheek. How she wishes she could burn her hands on him. Burn the rest of her body on him. “You’re the one for me, Klaus. I love you.” </p>
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  <p>He snatches her hand off of him so hard the force throws her down to her knees. “You presume too much. I don’t desire you. I don’t desire your love or your longing looks or your liar’s lips. All that I have ever wanted you for is your blood.” </p>
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  <p>Another girl might crawl at his feet, might beg. </p>
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  <p>Not Elena. </p>
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  <p>She rises to her full height and faces him with the implacable courage that first drew him to her bed all those fateful years ago. </p>
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  <p><em>Her fire,</em> he had called it.  </p>
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  <p>That was before she had known his true nature.</p>
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  <p>Before he had revealed that he had come to her seeking her death in some convoluted sacrifice ritual in which she was to be the fated lamb. </p>
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  <p>“You forget that I know you. I know the span of your hands, the taste of your skin. I know what it feels like when you come apart inside of me. I know the secret things that make you smile, and the sound of your heartbeat.” She tugs down the collar of her jacket to show him the messy scar on her throat. “I know the pierce of your bite, and of your regret. You can’t lie to me.” </p>
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  <p>The sight of his bite transfixes him. </p>
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  <p>The bite, from an hour before he had explained the sacrifice to her. From the time he had told her, an odd, broken note in his voice, <em>“I won’t go through with it. Not with you.” </em></p>
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  <p>He had been gone by morning, leaving her with nothing more than a note explaining that she would not see him again. </p>
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  <p>It had taken her weeks to figure out the truth he had never told her. Why he had determined to spare her the fate he had always intended for her. </p>
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  <p>She’d been searching for him ever since. </p>
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  <p>That had been two years ago. </p>
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  <p>Now that she’s found him, she refuses to let him push her away again. </p>
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  <p>Elena slides back into his personal space. Kisses his chin. His cheek. His mouth. “You underestimate me. Let me go through with the ritual for you.” </p>
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  <p>“You’ll die.” </p>
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  <p>“I don’t care, so long as it’s by your hands.” </p>
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  <p>He finally clasps her in his arms and draws her so close she hardly has space to breath. His mouth hovers above her own. “Why are you offering yourself like this?” </p>
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  <p>“Don’t you realize? I’m yours, for whatever our fates may have in store for us.” </p>
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<a name="section0019"><h2>19. He can't escape her</h2></a>
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    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He can't escape her. He's the one running now.</em>
</p><p>She's everywhere. He turns the corner: there she is. Looks in the mirror, and there, standing just behind him again, her, her, her.</p><p>A thousand years have passed, and while the memory of Tatia Petrova has surely haunted him, it had not been until after the sacrifice, when he'd revenged himself on Katerina and drained that last girl wearing a damned face had the haunting become quite so literal.</p><p>Now Tatia follows him for true, her eyes an accusation as she looks and looks and looks at him and refuses to ever look away, her gaze still and fixed as only the dead's can be.</p><p>Katerina plucks at his sleeves, her hands thin and gray as they never were in all the years he had known her. Where once she had caressed him with those hands, had loved him with those hands, now all she can do is demand from him that he acknowledge her. That he look at her, and see what he has done to her. He never looks, because then he would have to see the gaping wound in her chest where once her heart had been. She had given him her heart once, and he had taken exquisite pleasure in holding that still beating heart in his hand and ripping it from her chest, in watching the gray crawl of extinguishment creep over her skin. He had been a fool.</p><p>The worst is the last one. Elena, he reminds himself.</p><p>Her skin painted with blood from head to toe, flames eternally licking at her hands and her feet. He always knows she's found him again from the scent of charnel that follows her on a windless breeze. Of all of them, she holds herself farthest back. Never looks at him, never even seems to notice him. It's unbearable, when he can feel around his wrists and around his ankles and threading through his ribs heavy chains, forging his fate with hers. Her last words had been <em>Go to hell.</em> He had not realized at the time that she intended to drag him there herself. He feels the weight of them, pulling ever tighter. Her silhouette is thinner every time he spies her. He doesn't want to think what will happen to him when she disappears entirely.</p><p>And so he runs. Leaves America, and then the Western Hemisphere altogether. Abandons civilization and society to plunge into the deepest forests, the darkest seas, daring to outrun the inevitable.</p><p>Everywhere she finds him. She, she, and she.</p><p>His three-faced goddess. His death where he had only ever thought to look for triumph.</p><p>He had thought the chase was over that day he plunged his fangs into Elena Gilbert's neck, but now he knows: that was the day the true hunt began.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Morning After</h2></a>
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    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It’s obvious as soon as she wakes up with her head clearer than it’s been since she turned that this is a huge irrevocable mistake. The mistake to end all mistakes. </p><p>Elena creeps out from Tyler’s bed, cringing at the dried blood plastered all over both of their bodies, mapping the wild caresses that had led to the frenzied fucking last night. She trips almost right away-- she lands hard on the floor, where she is forced to look into the glassed over eyes of the girl she and Tyler had picked up at the Founder’s party last night and, in a whiskey-drenched, blood-starved haze, seduced and then devoured. </p><p>She groans, hanging her head in her hands, as viscous guilt surges up in her throat like bitter bile. </p><p>Worse. Her gums ache. Even now she’s wondering when her next opportunity to do it again will be. </p><p>“Lovely. You’re awake.” Tyler sits up and stretches. </p><p>Elena narrows her eyes at him. Something about his word choice seems off. She’s known Tyler since they were in diapers, and never once has she heard him use the word <em>lovely.</em> In fact, there’s been something odd about Tyler ever since he mysteriously, miraculously didn’t die when Klaus burned-- </p><p>The blanket falls off of him and she is faced with the evidence of everywhere she had touched him with her hands and her mouth last night, all mapped out in vivid crimson like the cheat, the slut, the failure she is.  </p><p>“What are we going to do? What are we going to tell Care?” Elena moans, huddling in on herself. She draws her knees to her chest and rests her forehead against them. There’s a dab of blood on her left thigh and she can’t help sticking her tongue out to taste it, to comfort herself with it, even in the pit of all of her anguish. </p><p>She’s gone and slept with her best friend’s boyfriend. Completely lost control of herself and abandoned everything that made her decent and worth loving. And she’s a murderer too, now. A really, really hungry one. </p><p>“We should come clean with her,” Tyler says. “Straight away.” He eyes her naked body. “Well, perhaps after another bout. What do you say?” He crawls onto the floor with her and pins her beneath him. </p><p>Lightning flashes through her brain. She kicks herself for not realizing sooner-- but how could she? She’s been a wrecked, starving mess ever since she woke up on that coroner’s table coughing her lungs out. </p><p>“Tell me again what you said after you saved me from Klaus,” she whispers. “In the kitchen.” </p><p>The hybrid on top of her pauses. “I wanted you to drink some orange juice.” </p><p>She shoves him off of her and darts to the other side, looking for her clothes. “First off, as though Tyler Lockwood would ever offer me anything other than a shot,” she says, thrusting her legs into her jeans. “Second off, what the hell, Klaus?” She stares down at her arms. She’s covered in Klaus-marks. Her skin crawls. “What was this? Why are you in Tyler’s body?” </p><p>He stretches and prowls towards her. “I’m on holiday here until your little witch friend can find a way to jump me back into my own without that stake destroying me as soon as she does.” </p><p>“And so you thought you’d just have a go at me?” </p><p>“You handed me the perfect opportunity to separate Miss Forbes from her boyfriend.” He leers at her. “I must say, though, the after dinner show was far beyond my expectations. I do hope I can persuade you for an encore.” </p><p>She slaps him. “You’re vile. I’d rather--”</p><p>“You’re already dead, and next to that, whatever else you might say is going to pale in comparison.” He leans in, brushes his mouth against her ear. </p><p>Elena represses the shiver of delight and disgust that rolls through her. </p><p>“And before you go casting stones: you still slept with me when you thought I was your dear friend’s boyfriend. What does that say about <em>you?</em>” </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0021"><h2>21. A Hitch in the Plan</h2></a>
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    <p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">“You’re cheating on me?” he asks, bewildered. </p><p class="p1">Elena-- sweet, sexy, sixteen year old Elena-- swats him, dashing tears away from her eyes in the next motion. “Of course not! God, how can you even think-- Of course it’s yours.” </p><p class="p1">“I highly doubt that.” Never sleep with a Petrova woman. That has been the rule he has been muttering to himself for 500 years. Why couldn’t he ever listen to himself? No, he just had to seduce the girl while he hunted for the moonstone, he couldn’t just leave her alone once he’d seen her-- </p><p class="p1">“Well, I regret sleeping with you too,” she sniffles. “But since you’re the only one I’ve ever been with--”</p><p class="p1">In an instant he’s caught her in his gaze. “Tell me who the true father of your child is,” he compels her. Once he has a name, he can vent his frustration and jealousy out on him. Snapping necks always makes him feel better. </p><p class="p1">“You are,” she informs him, bringing the sky to come crashing down on his head without so much as batting a pretty black eyelash. </p><p class="p1">He sputters, pushing her away from him. His thoughts spark and short-- how-- perhaps-- </p><p class="p1">He studies her wildly. Could her doppelganger nature be responsible? </p><p class="p1">He curses, all at once becoming aware of the weight of the moonstone in his pocket. </p><p class="p1">How can he sacrifice her now? He’ll have to wait-- he pauses, tries to recall how long human pregnancies last-- Well. Never mind. He’ll have to wait, at any rate. First for the child to be born, then for it to be weaned. And then? He can already foresee a limitless expanse of reasons to wait longer as this Elena Gilbert raises his child piling up in front of him. </p><p class="p1">And as he waits, Elena will only grow ever more beautiful and deadly. And he will have no choice but to fall in love with her. </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1"> </p>
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<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Teacher's Pet</h2></a>
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    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Elena, stay a minute after class.” </p><p>The girl pauses in the middle of packing up her bag, her large doe eyes curious but trusting. So trusting. Had Katerina ever looked at him like that? Tatia certainly never had. </p><p>As the class shuffles out, he takes the liberty of closing and locking the door, noting how still the girl doesn’t question him. </p><p>Isobel had chosen well when she’d selected the history teacher. </p><p>“What’s this about, Ric? Is it about–” she ducks her chin, very seriously, how sweet– <em>“Klaus?</em>” she half-whispers, half-mouths. </p><p>An absolute thrill rolls up his spine at the shape of his name in her mouth. </p><p>“Is there something you know that I don’t?” he asks carefully, fighting a smirk.</p><p>The girl’s face goes smooth as glass. He suddenly has a desire to tear her scalp free, the better for him to look inside her brain at all of those thoughts he can fair see swirling mercilessly behind her dark eyes. </p><p>He hovers over her desk. Cannot resist tucking a long tendril of her silky brown hair behind her ear, to sink into those abyssal eyes like an animal trapped in tar. Those eyes could smother a man. A vampire. </p><p>“Keep your guard up,” he murmurs, chucking her under the chin. “You never know who could lying in wait.” </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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